I’ve been reading a fair amount of works of narrative history lately, most dealing with the history of the Celtic peoples—especially those of the British Isles; lately, I’ve been reading more general histories of the British peoples for greater context. For decades, some prominent historians have been integrating archaeological and linguistic knowledge into their analyses of history and doing so in a properly skeptical way, skeptical but also openminded. More recently, there is greater or lesser use of genetic analyses from peer-reviewed scientific communities—to be sure, even peer-reviewed work can be subject to changes of both claims as to underlying facts and, most certainly, changes in interpretation. One main line of recent genetic/historical research has tried to determine who the European peoples are. It turns out there is a base of genes from the Neolithic modern humans of Europe; there are also elements of what seem to have been peoples who had come from the steppes of Western Eurasia—modern-day Ukraine and southern Russia; along some geographic bands (coast of Spain, Portugal, and France up into the British Isles), there are also genes coming from peoples from northern Syria and the adjoining regions of Turkey—the “First Farmers (of Western Eurasia)”; there is even a few percent of Neanderthal genes in modern Europeans.
The basic story seems to have stabilized most recently, but there was confusion from genetic analysis as well as from archaeological and linguistic analyses of, say, the events underlying what might be labeled the Indo-European phenomena of (mostly) prehistory. These phenomena were the partially mysterious events of the creation of a family and subfamilies of languages and cultures which spread from Ireland to India and Western China, from the toe of Italy to the northern borders of Scandinavia. These phenomena were also the corresponding spread of a warrior culture which seems to have been, more basically, a patron-client or patron-vassal culture. As it turns out, these cultures and languages spread partly because of invasions of large numbers of peoples and sometimes by invasions of smaller numbers of bands of warriors who brought no families or women with them and sometimes by processes of cultural imitation.
I’ll provide a list of books covering these subjects in the order in which I read them:
- “The horse, the wheel, and language” by David W Anthony,
- “War! What is it good for?” by Ian Morris,
- “The ancient Celts” by Barry W. Cunliffe,
- “Empires and Barbarians: The Fall of Rome and the Birth of Europe” by Peter J Heather,
- “The Fall of Rome : and the End of Civilization” by Bryan Ward-Perkins,
- “African Exodus : The Origins of Modern Humanity” by Christopher Stringer and Robin McKie,
- “Languages of the World: An Introduction” by Asya Pereltsvaig,
- “Archaeology and Language: The Puzzle of Indo-European Origins” by Colin Renfrew,
- “Deep Ancestry: Inside the Genographic Project” by Spencer Wells,
- “On the Common Ancestors of All Living Humans” by Douglas L T Rohde (to be found on Internet in pdf file),
- “First Farmers: The Origins of Agricultural Societies” by Peter Bellwood,
- “The seven daughters of Eve” by Bryan Sykes,
- “Druids: A Very Short Introduction” by Barry Cunliffe,
- “Saxons, Vikings, and Celts: The Genetic Roots of Britain and Ireland” by Bryan Sykes,
- “The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution” by Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending,
- “Britain Begins” by Barry Cunliffe,
- “The Barbarian Conversion: From Paganism to Christianity” by Richard Fletcher
- “Population Genetics: A Concise Guide” by John H. Gillespie.
There are many others, including some works on evolutionary biology or genes and some on historical works which might or might not deal directly with the new knowledge of human origins and human blood-based nature, but such knowledge is becoming part of the basic thought processes of those educated in recent decades, which group includes older thinkers who take care to keep up with new lines of research. It is those historians, or at least some future group of historians, who will help the scientists in providing a narrative structure which will turn all this knowledge of human biology into deeper understandings of human being. Philosophers, novelists and poets, theologians, the better sort of political and economic actors (are there any in the West in 2015?), and others should also join in. But, so far, few have done so.
In addition to these books, I’ve been reading the blogs of John Hawks, Razib Khan, and Peter Frost on a regular basis, the blog of Steve Sailer on a less regular basis. (Sailer deals with the current situation, modern politics and culture in light of genes or HBD—Human Biodiversity and that’s of lesser interest in light of my current work. I have my reasons to be more concerned with the view out the rear-window than with the view to the front.)
As a rule, the modern historians (Heather and Ward-Perkins and Cunliffe for sure) are respectful and also properly skeptical toward genetic research. Why should anyone be skeptical toward facts? Simply because their meaning is determined by greater contexts, as is said in the old warning: theories determine facts. Actually, `global’ facts such as narratives also determine `local’ facts. Genetic analyses of peoples in Europe or elsewhere tell us where our ancestors came from only when we understand fully which peoples were living in various locations at the crucial times of history and prehistory. (Prehistory can be reconstructed, but history is human documentation at least in the form of myths of origins or legends of ancestors.)
Recently, some geneticists published work they did trying to answer the question: Where did the first out-of-Africa migrants cross to Asia? One possibility is close to the Mediterranean, maybe even where Moses and the Israelites are said to have crossed when leaving Egypt. There are other possibilities, including places where the waters are too deep now but were far more shallow during periods when huge glaciers had absorbed much water and brought the sea-levels down throughout the world. A somewhat naive interpretation of the results led to the conclusion that they had taken the northern, `Israelite’ route, but some commentators pointed out that this assumed the people living nowadays in northern Egypt are direct descendants of people living there 40,000 years ago or so. The people currently living in northern Egypt might well be descendants of some people who crossed further south by way of some people who crossed back into Egypt. (In fact, there has been large-scale movements between Asia and northern Africa over the centuries.)
Historians are generally skeptical because they have studied the movements of peoples by way of ancient histories and legends and archaeological evidence and know better than to assume something of that sort—likely enough, some of them or some of their teachers or mentors had themselves made naive or implicit assumptions in the past. In some cases, we now have accurate knowledge of the movements and locations of peoples from thousands or even tens of thousands of years ago; thus it is that the indigenous peoples (think Cromagnon) of the British Isles, ancient Anatolians mixed with Mediterranean peoples, Scandinavians, Saxons and other Germans, and Normans (a Scandinavian people—mostly) can be mapped and set in historical context with a high degree of confidence. Thus it is that historians can understand how it is that Portuguese and other Spanish peoples can have Anatolian (`first-farmer’) blood along with a fair amount of shared genes with the Celtic peoples of the British Isles. Thus it is that they can understand the linguistic claim that the poetic name of Portugal (Lusitania) seems to have come from a Celtic word.
All of this is necessary background to understanding why it is dangerous for Europeans and North Americans to allow large-scale immigration of peoples who evolved in far different environments and, thus, have characteristics not suited for the political and economic and social communities of Europeans, especially those communities which have evolved and developed along with the individual Northwestern Europeans. Peter Frost summarized some of that background in a recent essay, A Pauper’s Death, by way of discussing a strange genre of rock-and-roll (black metal) and the ongoing national and ethnic suicide of the Norwegians, with other Sweden and other Northwestern countries and peoples following.
This all leads to the point raised in the title of this essay: our biological natures need to be considered in discussing our current political and social problems and in developing policies. More broadly, the question could be asked with respect to philosophers and theologians and researchers in the `softer’ human sciences and even writers of poetry and imaginative fictions. This, in turn, leads to the question: Are even the best traditional understandings of human nature, individual and communal, roughly equivalent to the more exact understandings of modern science—including the work of those historians who, with seeming competence, blend `traditional’ historical knowledge with archaeological and genetic knowledge, who blend `traditional’ analytic techniques with those of modern physical science?
Why does this proper use of modern science not show up in the works of most serious journalists, even those who can truly be labeled `journalist-historians’? Is it not relevant to the unfolding immigration disaster is Europe that Northwestern Europeans are radical individualists with internalized moral systems and high degrees of trust in their societies while most peoples of Southwestern Asia and Africa are deeply, that is—genetically, tribal in their characteristics? See Frost’s essay, Western Europe, State Formation, and Genetic Pacification, for a discussion of the `pacification’ of the males of (mostly) Northwestern Europe—that title seems to be a mistake if only because the Spanish, and Basque, peoples seem not to have been much `pacified’. Peoples who haven’t gone through this process require a, shall we say, strong leader to keep the young men and sometimes the older men under control. Even Saddam Hussein at his most brutal wasn’t so bad, or at least not so rationally brutal, as some of the kings of England and France, Germany and Norway during the centuries when those states were growing and—along with the Catholic Church—were pacifying their populations by removing certain genes from that the population, that is, by killing violent criminals—at the site of the crime or in prisons or on the scaffold. Men who were often themselves violent wished to destroy any `commoner’ versions of themselves in the interests of a peaceful and prosperous state. I repeat: they changed the characteristics of Northwestern Europeans by ruthless, year-in and year-out, executions or other sorts of killings of men who had committed violent crimes such as murder or rape. As a result and by the time that Northwestern European systems of justice became more gentle (circa 1800), the men of that region had become quite peaceful, in the sense of following `national’ laws and customs, even when dealing with the murder of a loved one; men of Northwest Europe (with some exceptions such as some populations of Gaels) no longer sought to carry out personal acts of revenge—they cooperated with systems of justice to an extent beyond the imaginations of even the prophets of Israel.
Is not this knowledge relevant to our fuller understanding of the dangers and opportunities which come with immigration? Is it not relevant to our efforts to understand the utter failure of the United States in its sometimes well-meaning and sometimes outright criminal efforts to reshape the world to American standards?
We should remember that the horrors of the Dark Ages (perhaps 600-900AD), such as famine and poverty and constant violence at the level of individuals and `states’ or tribes, came about because of the failure to assimilate huge numbers of German barbarians into Roman ways. We should remember that we Americans have failed to assimilate a very large number of African-Americans though they and their ancestors have been here for centuries. We farming and manufacturing Americans also failed to deal fairly with and to justly assimilate the nomadic and semi-nomadic Amerindians. It might be that geneticists and evolutionary biologists and at least some historians are right in claiming that evolution is for real and human characteristics are biologically based—farming peoples have genes for one set of characteristics, tribal peoples from tropical and subtropical regions have different genes, and tribal peoples from the Americas who lived nomadic and semi-nomadic lives for centuries have still different genes. Not all peoples are just chattering-class Americans who had the bad luck to be born in the wrong situation or with the wrong color of skin or the wrong facial features. The differences are more than skin-deep and need to be considered before we go over there or invite them over here. It’s those who think we’re all the same who are the bigots—the proof being that `same’ refers to the characteristics of chattering-class Americans.